


don't try this at home

by awkwardspiritanimals



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Leo Fitz loves Mythbusters you will never convince me otherwise, because what the world needs more than anything is more Mythbusters!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:45:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo Fitz is going to have to kiss Jemma Simmons. On national television. For science. Mythbusters!AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't try this at home

Skye is setting him up. He is one hundred percent sure she is setting him up, because she is sitting across the table from him and she cannot stop smirking. Couldn’t she just leave him alone and let him be a coward for the rest of his life? He blows things up for a living, shouldn’t she be slightly less willing to meddle in his personal life?

And how did she get everyone else to agree to this plan? If the knowing smiles being sent his way from every part of the table are any indication, they’re all in on the scheme. Even May keeps sending him sly looks from the head of the table, and isn’t she supposed to be the rational, stoic one? Aren’t they all supposed to be adults?

The only person at the table who doesn’t seem to be aware of the plan is Jemma, who is sitting next to him and taking notes dutifully, unaware that this is some ridiculous plan that Skye has come up with to murder Fitz by embarrassing him to death. Apparently she is completely unaware of the fact that his heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest as her shoulder leans against his just slightly, like it has for the past five years of meetings.

Where had Skye even found this myth that the whole team is suddenly so eager to test? Fitz is pretty sure he’s never heard of anything close to it, but his memory could be slightly faulty due to the fact that his brain is dedicating most of its processing power to freaking the hell out. When she had first mentioned it, he had felt safe in the knowledge that Coulson and May were rational scientists and there’s no way they would be willing to let the Build Team test this particular myth, which Fitz is almost entirely certain Skye had made up. But they had given their blessing almost immediately, which was Fitz’s first sign that something was wrong and a plot was being hatched and he was doomed and Trip, who is the resident myth expert, is talking about how he’s seen it mentioned a couple places and he’ll check his sources to find out more and _shit shit shit_.

The meeting was breaking up, and no one has come to his defense, and they start filming for the episode in two days and _shit shit shit_.

Leo Fitz was going to have to kiss Jemma Simmons, on whom he had a long-standing crush.

On national television.

 _For science_.

* * *

 

When he took the job, he really wasn’t expecting much. There weren’t many jobs out there for 20-year-old PhDs with a penchant for building things and then blowing them up. Most of the things he was being offered were internships paying in experience and a cost of living stipend. And so when Phil Coulson and Melinda May approached him, saying they were planning on creating a TV show that was about science and explosions and that they would be paying him an actual salary, he had said yes in a heartbeat.

He hadn’t understood at the time that they wanted him to actually be on TV. Fitz had figured he would be working behind the scenes, building devices that May and Coulson didn’t have time for and supervising the occasional explosion. But on his first day, they have him sit down at the big table to discuss the first couple of episodes and he finds himself sitting next to a pretty girl who looks astonishingly close to his age with a British accent, which is a combination that he hadn’t really expected to encounter here.

It’s the first surprise of a job full of them.

"Jemma Simmons," she introduces herself, and then points to the girl next to her, chatting with a man who is pretty much the exact definition of tall, dark and handsome, "That’s Skye, she’s on the Build Team with us. We’re thinking of getting an apartment."

"What?" he manages to choke out, nervous and confused.

"You’re Leo Fitz?" he nods, "Then you’re on the Build Team with Skye and me. We’re kind of like the second team. May and Coulson will do a couple of myths an episode, and we’ll do one or two. They call us the Build Team."

"Oh," is all he can say back, because apparently they expect him to get on television with two women who are easily beautiful enough to be models and explain science and he assumes they would prefer he not act like a total spaz. There is definitely no way this can go wrong.

"Anyway, we’re thinking of getting an apartment, and we kind of need a third person?" she says, and the day passes in a blur from that point on, but by the end of it he’s been roped into apartment hunting with Skye and Jemma, and he’s cheering along with the rest of the crew when they finish filming their first and only scene of the day.

"Remember," says May, totally serious, standing amidst the chaos of the studio, which is officially called M6 but is unofficially known as the Bus for reasons that have yet to be explained to Fitz, "Don’t try anything you’re about to see at home."

"We’re professionals," adds Coulson, flying through the frame on an office chair before crashing into a pile of spare parts and emerging with a grin. Everyone waits until the director yells cut, and then a cheer goes up, and Fitz thinks that he could be happy here. Mythbusters has a nice ring to it.

* * *

 

They’re kind of an odd team, two PhDs and a high school drop-out, but they get along well. They buy a two bedroom apartment and Skye jokes that she’s going to have to get the two of them together so that she can have a room to herself. Jemma smiles and rolls her eyes, and Fitz tries not to sound too nervous when he laughs, because really, it’s just a tiny crush and he assumes he’ll be over it in a couple weeks.

Skye is very good on camera, happy and funny, and Jemma is remarkably good at breaking down techno-babble into easier to understand terms, and Fitz is good at neither of those things, but he is good at building things and blowing things up and occasionally he will come up with a witty one-liner to say into the camera when it pans to him. Since this is actually one more thing than he thought he was being hired for, he considers it a success and lets Jemma and Skye split a good portion of their screen time.

Between the second and third episodes they shoot, Fitz learns that tall, dark and handsome is Grant Ward, whose main job is to keep the three of them from blowing anything up too much. Somewhere between the sixth and seventh episode, he starts joining the Build Team when they go out, and Skye and him develop a weird sort of flirtation where they stare at each other whenever they think the other isn’t looking.

His life falls into a pretty comfortable rhythm of explosions and science and laughter, and at some point he realizes it is two years later and he’s sitting on the roof of the Bus and drinking gross, flat, minty Diet Coke with his friends, which two years ago would have been a novel concept in and of itself. There’s a crew on the ground below them, cleaning the sprayed soda off the ground and the walls so that the lot looks clean next time they shoot outside and the sun is setting over the bay and Jemma is leaning her head against his shoulder, taking long swigs from her own two-liter bottle and he doesn’t want to question when his life became this perfect because that might jinx it.

"Why are we drinking this?" Jemma asks, even as she takes another long gulp.

"I think Skye dared us too?" He doesn’t really remember, because his head is swimming with the smell of her so close and maybe he should move away from the edge of the building, but that would mean making her move and he is whole-heartedly against that.

"And that convinced us?"

"Pretty sure it was a triple dog dare."

"Oh. Well, they should probably stop trusting us with so many dangerous chemicals then, since we’re apparently twelve years old."

"I like the dangerous chemicals though. Pretty much the only reason I took this job was because of the dangerous chemicals."

"You didn’t take it for the tantalizing promise of TV semi-stardom?"

"I didn’t actually realize when they offered me the job that I was going to be on TV. I thought I’d be doing Ward’s job. In fact, I’m not entirely sure why I’m in front of the camera while he’s off to the side, measuring black powder. He’s got the looks for it," he says, glancing over to where Ward and Skye are sitting, passing a dented plastic bottle of Diet Coke back and forth.

"Oh, don’t pout, Fitz. Besides, I think you’re plenty handsome," Jemma says, and she presses a kiss against his jawline that he’s pretty sure completely stops his heart. "And so do your fangirls, at least according to the letters that Skye likes to read so much."

He groans at the mention of the letters the office gets every week addressed to him; some of them are fine, kids telling him he makes them want to grow up to be scientists, people thanking him for combining science and entertainment, and a weirdly high number asking him if he knows Sean Connery personally. But some of them are rather horribly embarrassing, and Skye seems to take great pleasure in reading those in particular to everyone when they’re gathered for meetings.

"I thought we agreed never to talk about the letters, in public or in private. What are we doing for next episode?" he asks, taking a chance and resting his cheek against her hair.

"Hovercrafts, I think? Coulson was pretty excited."

"Good. At least Skye can’t dare me to drink anything left over after those experiments."

Instead, she challenges them to see who can get their makeshift hovercraft higher off the ground, and when he wins and brags about it for weeks afterwards, she convinces Coulson and May to make him act out all the scenes for the Connery-based myths when they do a James Bond episode. She is much better at this than him, but it’s kind of worth it when Jemma tells him he looks good in his tux.

* * *

 

"Why don’t you just ask her out?" Skye’s voice scares him, and he misses the nail he’s trying to put in the support frame he’s building for Coulson and May.

He looks around desperately for cameras, and when he doesn’t see any he turns back to her and attempts to keep his face passive when he asks, “Ask who out?”

Skye looks almost offended at his attempt, “Jemma, you dork. You spend enough time staring at her. And since you obviously haven’t noticed, she spends just as much time staring at you. And when you go on one of your crazy science babble rants that are too complicated to be aired and sometimes make me want to punch you in the mouth, she pretty much looks at you like the sun shines out your ass. Which she also spends a decent amount of time staring at.”

Fitz is pretty sure he’s bright red by this point, “You’re imagining things.”

"I’m really not. Are you chicken?"

"No. I mean, even if I like Jemma, which I don’t, I still wouldn’t ask her out. What if she didn’t like me back, or it didn’t work out, and then the show was awkward. It’s just a bad idea overall. And, again, I don’t like her like that. She’s just my best friend."

Skye gives him her most exasperated look, “Chicken.”

"Not chicken. Practical."

She makes chicken noises at him, drowning out any protests he might make, until she disappears off to another part of the shop. When Skye suggests the airplane windshield testing chicken gun at the next planning meeting, Fitz blushes so deeply red that Jemma asks if he’s sick. Skye only threatens to stick him in the gun and fire him in Jemma’s general direction twice, but he can tell this is only the beginning.

* * *

 

Fitz lets out a long groan and immediately regrets it, because the sound echoes around his head and it feels like someone is taking a jack hammer to the base of his skull. He senses a body thump heavily onto the bed beside him.

"I would assume that I’m dead, but if death hurts this much that’s a pretty raw deal," he mumbles into his pillow.

"I have never been this hungover in my life," Jemma says from somewhere next to him on the bed.

"Why did we let Skye talk us into being the test subjects for this one?"

"She didn’t even really have to. We both agreed that no one wanted very drunk Skye on the show."

"That’s true," he groans again, turning his head to squint at her, "Did I climb over the wall trying to get to bed on one of the nights?"

"Yeah. You fell and scared Skye pretty good. Or at least she says you did. She was laughing pretty hard at the time."

"Why do we still feel like this two days after the fact? This can’t actually be scientifically possible," he says.

"I don’t know, but if we propose it for an episode, I don’t care how weird or scary or whatever drunk Skye is, we’re making her and Ward do that one."

"Amen to that."

"Now stop talking. I’m going back to sleep," she says, and really his hangover doesn’t feel so bad, not with Jemma’s warm arm thrown across his waist and her head resting against his shoulder blade.

Skye tells him that finding the two of them like that almost makes up for the fact that she didn’t get any juicy confessions from them while they were drunk.

* * *

 

"You know, there’s no rule against you asking her out," Coulson says, and Fitz looks up from the sword-swinging robot he’s working on.

He barely manages not to sigh, because of all the people for Skye to tell about his massive crush on Jemma, Coulson is very near the top of the list. Really, can’t a man build a sword-swinging robot capable of cutting through a human torso in peace?

"Asking who out, sir?" and he wishes he was capable of sounding more bored and less nervous.

"Simmons."

"Listen, sir, I don’t know what Skye told you-"

"Skye didn’t tell me anything. I’ve got eyes, Fitz," Coulson says, and his smirk is so knowing that Fitz can’t help his blush. "Just wanted to make sure you knew that it’s perfectly fine with me and May."

"May knows?" he chokes out, more than slightly alarmed.

"She’s got eyes, too. We just wanted you to know that you had our blessing. Of course, Skye says it’s because you’re chicken."

He’s not _really_ tempted to try out the sword-swinging, torso-splitting robot on Skye, but he’s close.

* * *

 

Something is wrong. He senses it even before he can identify it, and he turns toward the pool and watches as the safety harness snaps and Jemma plummets towards the water and vanishes underneath, weighed down by her myth necessary, historically accurate costume. And then he’s running, pulling his jumper off and then he’s in the water, which might be a mistake because he’s never exactly been a strong swimmer, but he’s there in the water and swimming as fast as he can manage toward her. Then she’s got her arms around his neck and he’s got one around her waist, desperately flailing for the surface with the other, and when he breaks the surface he finds that he is no longer jealous of Ward’s biceps or Trip’s immaculate eyebrows because their glorious faces are right there to pull them out of the pool.

Once he checks that Jemma is alive, spluttering, soaked, but alive, he turns on his side and throws up, because oh, God, he had swallowed so much pool water jumping in, and why had he possibly thought that it was a good idea to just jump in after her when there were like 46 other people who were probably much more capable of saving her standing right next to the pool. When he’s done vomiting, he rolls onto his back, scooting as far away from the puke as he can manage and tries to remember how to breathe.

For a second, she appears over him, dripping, hair hanging around her face, brilliant and angelic in the San Francisco sunlight, and then Jemma is peppering his face in kisses. After a bit, she stops kissing him and just cuddles against his side, and he feels more than hears her whisper of _you’re the hero_ against his ear. They lay like that for a long time, even after the rest of the crew has gone home, enjoying the day off because Coulson has called filming while all the equipment is checked over, and he feels kind of gross because of chlorine and vomit, but mostly he just feels warm and happy.

Fitz is grateful that Skye refrains from making fun of him about this particular incident, although she does grin slyly at him every time Jemma refers to him as her ‘knight in shining armor.’ He only blushes a little bit.

* * *

 

“You’re totally chickenshit for not asking her out, Leopold, and so I am taking matters into my own hands,” Skye says from above him.

“Oh, no. Please don’t,” he asks, and she shrugs.

“It’s out of your hands now, Fitz. I’ve given you plenty of chances. The plan is in motion.”

“Oh, god, please, Skye, just let me be chickenshit for the rest of my life.”

“So, you admit you have a crush on her?”

He sighs, “Yes.”

“You, Leopold Fitz, admit that you have a big, giant, slobbering crush on Jemma Simmons and that you have had this crush for basically the entirety of the time you have known her?”

“Yes,” he mumbles, but Skye just puts a hand to her ear and leans forward, “Yes, I admit that I have a crush on Jemma. Now, please, don’t do whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”

“Sorry, Fitzy, but it’s too late for that. The time has come. The plan moves forward, unstoppable.”

* * *

 

And that’s how he ended up here, with three cameras trained on his face and Jemma Simmons standing in his personal space and fifty of his closest friends and co-workers staring at him with ridiculous grins on their faces. He still isn’t one hundred percent sure if this myth is real, or even what the myth really is, but he is now going to have to stand here and kiss Jemma Simmons five times, at least, in the name of science and try not to die.

“Action,” calls the director, and Jemma looks up at him nervously, biting her lip, and he swallows hard. _Shit shit shit_ he thinks, and then he leans forward, one hand coming up to run his thumb along her cheekbone softly before his lips meet hers.

And it’s for science and there are people watching and they are being filmed and it’s sort of completely wonderful despite all of that, the slight movement of her lips against his and the warmth of her cheek under his hand and the way her fingers grip at the fabric of his t-shirt. Honestly, it’s all driving him a little crazy, in the best kind of way, and he doesn’t want to pull away, even when he hears Skye give the signal to.

But he does, because it’s for science, and he is infinitely glad for small miracles, like the fact that everyone has been forbidden from whooping or clapping in anyway. And he doesn’t quite know what to make of the look on her face, still so close to his, and then the director is calling for a five minute break before they go again, and he tries not to move away from her too quickly, but he’s sort of freaking out.

It’s Skye who finds him, hiding in one of the many small offices, actively trying not to have a meltdown, because it’s for science and she absolutely takes his breath away and _shit shit shit_.

“Hey, that looked pretty good,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows at him, “Excited for four more of those?”

And he’d been pacing while she talked, so his back is to the doorway when he rounds on her and says, “Oh, yeah. I’m really looking forward to kissing Jemma again for science,” and the look on Skye’s face tells him something is wrong almost immediately. He turns to find Jemma standing in the doorway, tears in her eyes, and then she mutters _excuse me_ and takes off.

Fitz stands there stunned for a few seconds, and then Skye pushes him and gives him a look that clearly says _go_ , and he takes off after her, because he’s tired of being a coward. He knows her so well, better than he knows anyone else, and so he knows exactly where she’ll go. He’s nervous enough to be shaking when he approaches her, sitting on the edge of the roof, where they’ve watched sunsets and sunrises for years now, five years, and they’ve been the best five years of his life by far and he wouldn’t trade them for anything.

“Jemma, let me explain, please,” he asks, and she turns to him, clearly trying not to cry.

“You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to, Fitz. We could probably get someone else to do it, maybe Ward would do it. Or we could just scrap the episode altogether. Or-”

“It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you!” he says, cutting her off, and realizes too late that he’s kind of shouting. He takes a deep breath before he continues, “It’s not at all that I don’t want to kiss you. I want to kiss you pretty much all the time, and I’ve wanted to kiss you for pretty much the entire time I’ve known you. Sometimes I nearly go insane with how much I want to kiss you, but I don’t because I think that kissing you might actually drive me more insane, and kissing you and then not being able to kiss you again would most definitely drive me out of my bloody mind.

“I just… I don’t want to kiss you in the name of science. I mean, not just in the name of science. I want to kiss you in the name of being absolutely and completely besotted with you,” he finishes, and he can’t even look at her.

“Really?” she asks, and can she really still doubt him after all of that?

“Ask Skye. She’s been trying to get me to admit it to you for three years now. She’s the one who set this all up. Said she was taking matters into her own hands.”

“Oh,” she says, and then stares out at the bay for a long time before continuing, “You know, I’d like to kiss you not in the name of science too.”

It’s his turn to say _oh_ and then stare for a long time, not at the bay, but at her.

“Fitz?” she asks, after a while.

“Yeah?”

“You should kiss me now, you dork,” she says, but she’s smiling, and he did actually need to be told twice, but not three times, and he leans forward and does just that. And it is in fact enough to drive him insane, the way her fingers clutch at the collar of his t-shirt to keep his mouth attached to hers and the sound she makes when his tongue runs across her bottom lip and literally everything about her and he is going to fall off this roof and die if he doesn’t stop soon but he absolutely cannot stop kissing her.

“So, we probably need to go back downstairs and kiss for science,” she says at some point against his lips.

“Yes, right. Do you really understand the myth we’re testing?” he asks, brushing his nose against hers because he finds it a little impossible to actually pull away from her and has decided that doing it in steps is his only hope.

“Not at all. It’s possible that Skye made it up.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Still, I wouldn’t mind kissing you for science.”

“I don’t care what the warning says, we’re definitely trying this at home,” he whispers and she laughs and it is absolutely the best sound in the world. And Fitz has a pretty high standard for that, because he once heard a cement truck blasted into smithereens.

* * *

Skye refuses to stop talking about how brilliant her plan was. Fitz locks her in a storage closet with Ward for payback.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is brought to you by my total and complete love of Mythbusters, and my headcanon that Leo Fitz shares this love.
> 
> All the myths mentioned are actual myths that have appeared on the show, though they are not necessarily in the correct order.


End file.
